Our position is: 53:11.917N 05:49.871E

Distance covered: 42.4Nm

We were up early, refreshed by our short day yesterday, but frustratingly surrounded by piles of wet washing as the dryer ate our token and didn’t deliver any drying and the office was shut. We had no time to spare to sort it out, if we were going to make up for lost time, and by 8.30 we were beam reaching across the Ijsselmeer in a brisk and cold F4-5 North Westerly heading for the locks at Lemmer.

 This guy was coming out of Lemmer as we got close

There was no special sport lock so sharing it with 2 big sailing barges and a very large commercial barge as well as other yachts and motor boats made tying up tricky, particularly with the strong cross wind, but we were soon on our way and back to the normal routine of canals and bridges.

 The locks were congested

But the sailing barges wasted no time in getting their sails set

But they had to come down again for bridge negotiation

We have seen quite a lot of this roofing arrangement of tiles and thatch

We had arranged earlier for spare parts for our water heater to be sent to the CA HLR for North Netherlands, Dr Jan Veldhuis, and today was the day we would be nearest to his home, so we needed to arrange to meet up with him for the handing over of the parcel. Without his help it would have been far more problematic to organise this and we were extremely grateful to this selfless volunteer, who gave up his time to meet up with us along the way and share his expertise about the journey to come (and he doesn’t even have a boat of his own any more).

 The meeting place with Dr Veldhuis

We met up with him in a small marina at Warten. We thought it was just off our track but he recommended we carry on along that canal, however when we left the marina the immediate bridge had 2 red lights which meant it wouldn’t open for some time so we decided to re-join the route as shown in the books we had. Shortly we arrived at another bridge showing 2 reds but at least there was somewhere to tie up. As it was 16:30 we assumed it was closed for the rush hour, even though this was not indicated in the information, so we settled down to wait. At 18:15 a helpful man came and told us this bridge no longer opened (and hadn’t since 2007!) so we returned to our earlier passage (with some trepidation as bits we had already covered were not very deep) and this time the bridge was ready to open so we passed through and then through our first toll bridge, where a very friendly lady lowered a clog on a fishing rod to receive our 2 euros.

Recommended route showing 2 reds so we turned away

But it opened when we came back

The toll bridge

and the lady stashing away our 2 euros (hardly seems enough to warrant having someone to collect it!)

The route through Warten was very picturesque (and plenty deep enough) and soon we were passing over the main road on a new aqueduct into Leeuwarden.It was late by now and we were anxious to find somewhere to stop for the night, particularly as the bridges were closed for the night. We failed to find the Jachthaven we were looking for, in spite of helpful (not very) signposts but instead managed to tie up alongside on a side canal, in what appeared to be the middle of an industrial estate. There we met a German couple on a chartered motor cruiser fruitlessly looking for a restaurant – at least we had supplies on the boat. We also chatted to a Dutch couple on an adjoining boat to try and get some help interpreting the book with the bridge information, but they seemed as confused as we were, so we settled down and enjoyed spaghetti Bolognese.

The aqueduct and the road it passed over

Finally tied up for the night